Little paradise where the chickens have names
Interview with Nathalie Roovers, owner of a guesthouse for pilgrims near Ravenstein. On Saturday 26 September, Nathalie will lead the seventh silent walk in our series ‘the Walk of Wisdom in a year round‘. She introduces the participants to a special church and to the Sufi Latifa prayer, which is central to her coaching practice. By Damien Messing.
“There are people who have never picked an apple.” Nathalie says it next to a full apple tree with a wonderful mixture of disbelief and gratitude.
White silence
In September 2019 I am sitting in her elongated garden in Neerlangel, a town with 70 inhabitants near Ravenstein, about 700 meters from our route. More and more pilgrims are finding their way to her luxurious wooden guest house. A little from her house is a small church dedicated to John the Baptist. She maintains it with the other inhabitants of her village and likes to refer pilgrims to it.
“I’ve hated churches for a long time. I found them oppressive, but when I came here, I felt something else: hey, this is the house of God. There is what is so beautifully called ‘white silence’. The space is not filled. There are statues and it is consecrated, but the church has an atmosphere that is very inviting to everyone. Once, while cleaning, my daughter spontaneously stood on the altar and that didn’t feel disrespectful.”
Cookie
“I can be very worried about the climate, but when I’m in the here and now, I see this huge harvest of blackberries – for the second time now and they are still tasty. Koekie [one of her chickens, DM] is further down the road and enjoys her own hole among the other chickens. The fruit trees, the sheep: I’m never going to leave here.”
She goes to the vet with Koekie – and Wies, Kaatje, Jootje or Siri (named by her daughter after a Syrian girl) – if necessary: “That was unprecedented the first time. But they are beings, aren’t they, living beings. They have their own character, you can pet them. Their sounds are pleasant to hear, they have a therapeutic effect.” During my visit, Koekie sits on Nathalie’s lap.
The sun is shining brightly when she shows me her coaching room and the luxurious garden house where the pilgrims sleep. “Look!” She points out how the sun casts a square of light through the skylight on the wall and bookcase, right where a large picture book is opened. “White silence.“
Latifa
“My coaching is built around the Latifa prayer that I learned at Pulsar, a training inspired by the teachings of the Sufis. It is about how you can free yourself from the constraint of your personality (ego), so that your soul can give direction more and more often and more easily in what you do and – certainly – create. The starting point is that you are a creator. To create is to bring about something from your soul that is innovative and liberating, also for others. It is always in relation to the other, to the world. Where you are a creator, the other person needs something.
Victor Frenkl called this the will to meaning, which expressed itself in him even in the concentration camp. Man longs to belong to something, to lay his eggs, whether it is cooking, leading, humor or being able to listen. That desire wants to be manifested.
You always carry this desire for meaning with you and with the Latifa prayer I want to appeal to her creative power. Latifa is Arabic for subtlety or sophistication and is one of the 99 names of Allah. There are wonderful aspects to Islam. Prayer is actually a learning path that leads through seven human qualities.
The first is acceptance: to see yourself from a distance and see where your creative power stops. Just as a painter has to distance himself in order to be closer to his work. To be a creator, you must first accept that you are a creature, with all your idiosyncrasies, body, and mind. The learning path is about the search for your personal creative capacity and the right conditions for it to flourish. “
Pilgrim
When listening to Nathalie, I am reminded of our symbol Pilgrim by Huub and Adelheid Kortekaas: their depiction of man as a ‘seedling of Mother Earth’, each with its own and unique germination capacity. In that light, personal development is not just for yourself. When you develop and flourish yourself, you help shape the greater whole of which you are a part.
For Nathalie, the place where she lives and works is an expression of herself, a creation. The joy and gratitude with which she talks about it also express her acceptance as a creature. These are the conditions that a sensitive woman like her with a need for nature, space and silence needs to flourish. At the same time, she shares these circumstances with others and is so for everyone.
Interestingly, with her female partner, she has a child from a donor who also has 13 other children. The children are always welcome to stay with him and once a year all together. Nathalie: “That’s also creating.”
Small paradise where the chickens have a name and you can – if you pay attention – see the white silence: the Conquest. From here, Nathalie will guide our seventh silent walk on Saturday 26 September. She starts with an introduction to the Latifa prayer and then accompanies the group to the church and via Niftrik to Wijchen.
Limited space: more.
NB: On Saturday 29 August, the sixth silent walk in the series ‘the Walk of Wisdom in a year around’ will take place from Nederasselt to Ravenstein (lake).
Monastery
This is my last article for the Walk of Wisdom for the time being. I am going to live in a Buddhist monastery in England for an indefinite period of time. I’m writing this interview in quarantine and my step here feels like an acceptance of myself as a creature. These are the conditions I need right now. I hope that it will give me – as that painter Nathalie talks about – the right distance to look at my life in order to further shape it from within.
A kind of Walk of Wisdom, but longer and more intensive. I wish you well!
Damien
